Herald Blogs

August 31, 2010

Where did Poked go?

The column is still around, but this blog is now dormant. We're keeping it around for your browsing pleasure.

Posts about Poked can now be found on my technology blog, The Digital Dish. Poked columns on social media and netiquette are mixed in with local tech news and gadget reviews, but you can always go to the Poked category on the blog to single out the columns.

And of course, you can read them in the print Tech Tuesday section or at MiamiHerald.com.

August 24, 2010

Netiquette of using Facebook Places

Even if you never use
Facebook's geo-tagging feature, be aware: thanks to a new Facebook
feature, your "friends'' can now post a map of where you are without
your permission.

Not comfortable with having the world know
where you are at a given moment? Don't panic. A change of privacy
settings can block geo-tagging.

But first, you need to know how
it works. The newly released feature, called Facebook Places, uses your
cellphone's GPS to let you ``check in'' to a nearby establishment and
broadcast where you are to your Facebook connections. (In order to
``check in,'' the person doing the tagging must be using Facebook on a
cellphone, but anyone can see the information.)

For example, at work I can ``check in'' to The Miami Herald. My
profile then says I'm at The Herald, and it shows a map and description
of the company, along with other friends who have been here.

Your friends can also do this on your behalf. Facebook Places lets you
``Tag Friends With You'' -- so I can go in and mark off a ton of
co-workers (even ones who are not actually in the building), and it
shows up on all their profiles as being here.

But ... it's a
big netiquette ``no'' to assume others want their location posted to
Facebook (or any other social networking site.) If you're out with
friends and want to tag them, you need to first ask if no one minds.
Even though Facebook's new feature can be turned off, you can't assume
everyone is savvy enough to have done that.

If you are queasy about having your whereabouts telegraphed, it's easy to block people from tagging you.

In Facebook, click Account on the far right, and go to Privacy
Settings. In the area under Sharing on Facebook, click the link at the
bottom of the list that says Customize Settings. There you can see
settings related to Facebook Places, including disabling friends from
checking in on your behalf.

If your tweens or teens use
Facebook, be aware that they can now use their phone to broadcast
exactly when and where they are, which can be dangerous if they don't
use privacy settings. There's even a way to create a ``check in'' for
your home -- something I strongly discourage, no matter what your age.

Facebook's terms of use say no one under 13 should use the site. But
I've spoken to several parents with children much younger than 13 on
Facebook, and the children simply lie about their age in the profile.
Parents should include Facebook Places in conversations about online
safety and sharing information with strangers.

Despite these
warnings, the service has some fun benefits. The instant I walk in, I
can quickly let my friends know of a great band playing at a restaurant
I'm at, or a store with a sale going on.

If this location
feature sounds familiar, that's because it's not new. Third-party
applications like Foursquare and Gowalla have been posting this type of
information on Facebook for awhile now -- but now that it's a feature
built into the Facebook application and mobile website, expect people to
use this more frequently.

Big news should be shared personally, not on Facebook

When I come across stories of people discovering huge news about
close family members and friends on Facebook, it shocks me. You might
think those examples must be unique cases of someone with poor manners,
or an estranged relationship. But they aren't.

I asked my social networks about this topic and some shared
eye-opening examples of best friends and close family breaking news --
mostly involving moving and engagement -- in a status message instead of
picking up a phone.

To those who are guilty of doing this,
your argument could be that Facebook is designed to find out what your
friends are up to, and the tool makes it a convenient way to spread news
about life changes in a time-crunched world.

I agree that
Facebook is a fantastic tool for announcing news to your friends. And
I've learned about friends getting engaged or having a baby on there --
but it's never someone who is exceptionally close to me.

Your
best friends, parents, siblings and other close relatives should not be
treated the same as the other 500 acquaintances on your social network.
Posting that news on a status message tells them they are no different
than anyone else.

A Twitter user shared a story with me about
finding out about her best friend's engagement from a blog post. She
said the friendship fell apart after the hurt feelings.

Technology can make us lazy in our communication skills, especially for
those hooked on updating Facebook frequently. That said, it's sad for a
friendship to be demolished because of a mindless faux pas. If it
happened to me, I'd be very hurt, but I'd also let that person know that
I would rather not learn about big news that way.

The majority
of our time online is spent on social networks. According to Nielsen,
social networks take up 22.7 percent of the time spent online, compared
to 15.8 percent last year.

Because of that, you can't assume
everyone treats social media the same way you do. Many of the examples I
heard came from parents of 20-something-year-olds. Younger people have
grown up using Facebook and texting as primary communication tools. But
we shouldn't let it be the primary tool in every circumstance.

I've also seen drama unfold over news that isn't as big as marriage. One
out-of-town user was hit with comments like, ``Why didn't you tell me
you were back in Miami?'' after posting a status message about having
lunch nearby. Needless to say, it's an awkward moment that could have
been avoided with a quick text message to close friends -- or privacy
settings to block unwanted people from knowing.

July 27, 2010

Social Media has evolved. Have you?

In the world of social media, two years seems like a century.

When Bridget and I started writing this column in October 2008, Twitter
was just becoming well-known, Foursquare wasn't, and we were hoping to
prevent bosses from friending their subordinates on Facebook.

Well, two out of three isn't bad.

I've been thinking over the past two years of Poked quite a bit this week, since it's my last week working for The Miami Herald. I'm moving to a new job at Chicago Public Radio - and it's made me think quite a bit about how life has changed online.

While I've become more laid-back about letting people into, for
example, my Facebook world, it's still only for people I've met in
real-life. And all the conversations about Facebook and privacy have
confirmed long-held opinions I have about being cautious about anything
I put into writing.

A new "Digital Future'' study released last week paints a similar
contradictory picture of life online: While the percentage of Americans
using the Internet are at an all-time high, the amount of people who
say they find information online reliable or trustworthy is at an
all-time low. When the information is on a social networking site, even
heavy users have a low opinion of the information's reliability and
accuracy.

USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism has been
publishing its Digital Future study annually since 2000. The school
noted that during that time, as Internet use had grown and become more
mainstream, it would seem logical that people's attitudes about it
would also stabilize.

"Yet beginning with our first Digital
Future Study in 2000, and in every year since, we have found
extraordinary levels of shifting views, new and evolving attitudes
about technology, adoption of new media, and casting off of old methods
as part of involvement -- or not being involved -- in the online
experience,'' the Center for Digital Future's Director, Jeffrey Cole,
said in a statement about the study. (Cole was traveling out of the country when I wrote the column for the paper, so we weren't able to communicate in person.)

In the Digital Future study, more than half
of the people surveyed said the Internet was important or very important to maintaining social relationships.

For me,
maintaining relationships online will be even more important, when I move - but one constant for me will
remain: using the digital world to keep these relationships going,
whether they were made online through Twitter or maintained through
Facebook.

Posting photos of the kids comes with its own netiquette

Technology has made it easier than ever for parents to document
and share every cute kid moment on Facebook.

But that doesn't
mean every moment should be shared.

I don't have a child, but
I've heard of parents going through a few awkward situations when it
comes to posting photos of children. So I spoke to several parents who
are active on social networks, and there seems to be a few key issues
everyone agrees on.

• Keep the bathtub and potty
training photos to yourself and the grandparents. Naked photos are too
personal to share on Facebook. If you depend on Facebook as the main way
to share photos with family, then use privacy settings to limit access
just to a select few family members.

•
Take caution when posting a photo of kids that aren't your own. I've
come across a few parents that don't want their children on Facebook at
all, so be sure to ask a parent if it's OK to post the pic on Facebook
before doing so.

And if you are one of those parents who is
worried about what is shared on Facebook, kindly let your friends and
family know ahead of time to avoid an awkward situation later.

• Out of respect for safety, don't tag a child's
full name on Facebook. Some parents told me they never put their own
kid's real names online. Some just use an initial when mentioning a
child in a status message or in a photo.

•
If you make your photos public to people outside of immediate family,
avoid revealing where the child goes to school. If the child wears a
uniform, be sure to crop out the uniform logo in the picture. It's a
good way to keep safe from predators. (It's also a policy that the Belen
Jesuit Preparatory School in Miami sends home to parents.)

• Since most teenagers think their parent is
embarrassing, a few parents of tweens and teens gave me some advice on
how to avoid being annoying online. Some ask their kid if they can post a
photo to Facebook before doing so. Others will post regardless, but let
their teen do the tagging.

It used to be that mom and dad got
out the dusty photo album to show off baby pictures. Now, a whole
generation of kids are growing up in an age where the world sees their
baby photos before they can talk. So for those that can't wait to show
every adorable moment, just ask yourself, ``Would I be embarrassed if
this was posted about me?''

As momblogger Karen Ziemkowski
posted on her Twitter account, ``your kid is a person, not a pet.'' She
keeps in mind that anything she posts will be around when her son grows
up.

So that naked photo of your kid covered in poop . . . yeah,
not something that should be shared with the world.

June 29, 2010

Think your work Blackberry is private?

Today's Poked column was inspired by a coworker, who came to me with a query I suspect is fairly common, about privacy and our work phones. It made me think that many folks have spent quite a bit of time complaining about Facebook and its privacy issues, but it also made me wonder if they've taken the time to look at another privacy issue: what's being monitored on our work equipment like Blackberries.

It also made me realize that I haven't really read our company's IT policy? It's 13 pages long, single-spaced. If I had read past the first few
paragraphs, I would have come across a very clearly stated policy -- on
page two -- that details how I have absolutely no "reasonable
expectation'' of privacy or confidentiality when I'm using company
equipment like a desktop computer or Blackberry, even if I'm using my
personal e-mail account.

I wonder if Sgt. Quon of the Ontario,
Calif., police department read his company policy before he signed it. His was fairly similar to mine. Still, Quon argued that when the police
department read personal text messages he sent from his company-issued
pager, they were violating his constitutional right against unreasonable search.

The court took care to say that it was a narrow decision, cautioning
that it should not be used to establish "far-reaching premises that
define the existence, and extent, of privacy expectations of employees
using employer-provided communication devices.''

Journalists, like many professionals, practically live on their
Blackberries. (Well, not me -- but I do live on my Droid, although I
own it.) They have their work e-mail accounts, but also personal
e-mail, Facebook and instant messaging, at least, installed on their
smartphones.

I've always been skeptical about anything I do on a
work computer or device. But I'm just one camp, says employment lawyer
Chris Parlo. Parlo, who is based in New York with Morgan Lewis, says
there's a whole other group of people out there, like my co-worker, and
like Quon, who have different expectations of privacy.

Parlo thinks the Supreme Court decision has put companies and workers on notice.

Employers need to make sure they have policies that are well-known,
clear and broad, so it captures all devices, situations and scenarios
in which this might be an issue.

Workers need to have a reality
check, too, he says. "I think the average worker has to understand
that they're not free to do whatever they want, and should pay careful
attention to what the employer has told them about what restrictions of
personal use are on workplace devices.''

Have you read your company's IT policy? Did it made you switch from one camp to the other?

June 10, 2010

World Cup edition

Bridget's fairly indifferent to the World Cup (she describes herself as someone who "watches the last game") but this is one of my favorite times of the (every four) years! Our friends over at the newly launched Pitch to the Rhino have put together this cool guide of each team's social media presence:

And, if you want to follow the game in real-time on Twitter, they've just launched a new web site fully dedicated to the beautiful game. Wired has all the details.

June 08, 2010

Five guidelines to avoid looking like a dweeb on Foursquare, Gowalla

Location-based social media applications like Foursquare and Gowalla are starting to become mainstream, and it's clear these communities can use some netiquette.

Though each functions a little differently, the idea is much the same, a high-techy personalized version of "Carmen Sandiego." When you arrive at a location, you use the mobile phone applications to "check in," letting the world know: "Hey, look where I am!'' Some marketers are using these oversharing games to their advantage and offering discounts to frequent visitors. (Starbucks does this, and I included a screen grab of their reward here as an example.)

You can also friend your favorite users to see where they are. And you can post your check-in announcements on Facebook and Twitter.

So why do this? Well, you can collect points and awards with the more you do, and compare them with other users. For example, you'll get a School Night award badge on Foursquare if you checked into a place after 3 a.m. on a school night. Or you can get a Lucha Libre pin on Gowalla after checking in at 10 Mexican food spots. (For now, at least, the points won't get you anything more than recognition.)

That said, if you want to get into the game, I recommended you play nice and follow these five basic guidelines to avoid looking like a twit:

1. We know you go to work every day, and you're awesome for doing so. But please spare the world and avoid publishing these mundane check-ins announcements to your Facebook and Twitter feeds. You can get the Foursquare or Gowalla points even if you don't share it with Facebook and Twitter. It adds pointless noise to your profile feeds.

2. You can also spare the world from announcing on Facebook and Twitter every time you visit some fast food drive-through or grocery mart. Unless there's something special going on at the time, you look pretty lame bragging to the world that you're picking up some milk or getting a Crunchwrap Supreme.

3. It's a bad idea to create a check-in location for your home or your friend's home. Sure, it's a cheap way to get more points. But it lets everyone in the neighborhood see what user lives there. (And when that user isn't home.) If you regret making a check-in for your home, contact the support team to remove it for you.

4. When you're one of the first users in an area, sometimes you have to create the profile of the place. Please, for the sake of being a good community player, take the time to spell the place correctly and use proper punctuation. I've seen way too many instances where names are spelled wrong, so people create doubles and clutter the space.

5. Speaking of clutter, don't create check-in locations for every room of your building. A church near my home even has a check-in for every men's and women's bathroom. Aside from the gross oversharing, it crowds out other places that are near me. If my app doesn't show the CVS near me because you would rather let the world know you are mayor of the bathroom, I think it's time to put down the phone.